My Git Workflow

TLDR;

• Keep master shippable
• Develop on a branch
• Rebase only on a branch other than master
• Merge development branch back to master
• Use git fetch and git merge origin master over git pull
• Do a dry run before pushing to master: git push --dry-run origin master

Details

Develop on a branch

• On master: git co -b new_branch
• (will be switched to new_branch)
• Develop, commit, rebase as needed

Staying up to date

As new changes are committed to master, get them from the server and bring those into the branch before merging back into master.

• Switch to master git co master (note, the next 3 steps (with the exception of the 2nd) are the same as "git pull")
• git fetch
• review newly downloaded changes git log origin/master
• merge into master git merge origin/master

Getting changes onto the branch

To get the new change into new_branch:

• Switch to new_branch git co new_branch
• git rebase master

A breakdown of what rebase does:

• The commits I've made to new_branch are "lifted" or "stashed" off of the branch
• A git merge master is performed
• My "lifted" commits are then reapplied

Note: If there are conflicts, I am prompted to fix them at this point, on the branch

Work is complete

When I am ready to merge all work done on new_branch back into master I simply do:

• From new_branch: git co master
• On master: git merge new_branch

Measure twice, cut once

At this point, before pushing code to origin, I do a "dry run" to verify I have the latest changes from master after my last fetch

git push --dry-run origin master

Then if all is clean:

git push origin master